Chip maker designer and marketeer Advanced Micro Devices has been forced to sit through all the glowing news about rival Intel's "Nehalem EP" Xeon 5500 chips for the past three weeks, and now that the news has died down a bit, the company will today announce that it has cranked the clocks on its "Shanghai" quad-core Opteron processors while at the same time re-introducing ultra-low voltage and energy efficient parts that can take the fight to Intel.

A Scottish company trialling "intimate communication over a distance" is seeking couples interested in drawing lines of light on each other's bodies rather than the more-traditional teledildonics hardware.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling presents his budget today as the UK faces its worse recession for a generation. And his big idea is using offshoring and shared services to cut billions of pounds, and thousands of jobs, from the civil service.

Geeks Guide2 Let’s face it; all software development projects have their fair share of problems. While some are particularly minor, some could result in catastrophic project failure. However, such failures are not always the fault of a single software developer’s error; instead a multitude of technical and non-technical issues are commonly at fault.

Here's one for all those concerned at the prospect of advancing age gradually stripping away their, erm, wait, tip of my tongue - memory. Bad news: your ability to retain information will indeed disappear as you get older. But, in a cruel twist of fate, if you aren't concerned you'll be fine.

This is one of a series of articles which draws on online research conducted in partnership with The Register in October 2008. Some 1,125 people, from organisations large and small based in the UK, United States and many other countries took the time to let us know how IT systems are being used in their businesses. Thanks to all of you who took part.

It looks like the US, Europe and several of the world's major car manufacturers are set to agree on a standard power connector for plug-in e-cars. Or rather two standards: one for the new world, one for the old.

Astronomers believe that there may be a "water world" capable of harbouring intelligent alien life orbiting a star just 20 lightyears from Earth. Unfortunately, it appears that the first communication any aliens will receive from the human race will be a multimedia compilation assembled by Bebo users.

Disgraced PC-tycoon Charles Forsyth died almost penniless, according to the administrator of his estate. High-living Forsyth, who left a legacy of four crashed computer companies and served a three and a half year prison sentence, died last year of a heart attack aged just 49.

The European Parliament and its member states are reportedly on a “collision course” over tackling online piracy, after the two parties failed to agree on a final sticking point in a massive reform of the telecoms industry.

Privacy regulator the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said that 74 people have written to it about Google's Street View service since its launch last month. It said it would release details of the complaints and enquiries soon.

Any recording business executive celebrating the court victory over The Pirate Bay should have been in San Francisco this weekend for a reality check. Attending CodeCon 2009 would have brought them swiftly down to earth, and emphasised the futility of trying to prevent P2P file sharing. What's the point, when you can make money off it instead?

A content-tracking software company wants the internet's biggest advertising networks to siphon money from advertising on copyright-infringing websites and divert it to the material's original owners. No major ad network has signed up yet.

Rumoured control issues in Richard Branson's WhiteKnightTwo rocketplane-piggyback "mothership" craft appear to be persisting. Reports have it that the innovative aircraft smacked one or both of its tails against the runway during a recent test flight.

‘It’s a Dual camera,’ says the little sticker on the side of the vaguely retro, pistol grip, Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000 camcorder. Sure it can function as a 12Mp still camera too, but when it comes to video, Sanyo claims the Xacti is the first consumer camcorder to shoot 60 frames per second in 1080p full HD. To achieve this, and easier editing, Sanyo utilises "True Progressive" scanning technology which, during playback, allows freeze framing on full, rather than interlaced images.

The New Zealand version of Microsoft's MSN website was briefly hijacked after attackers penetrated that country's prominent domain name registrar. Websites for Sony, BitDefender, and HSBC were also commandeered.